Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
When I climbed into the truck, Rumor was sitting there, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. I didn’t need to see her eyes to know she was terrified. She thought this was all on her, and Blaise was right. She was going to run or try to. I had to give her a reason to stay.
“Everything is fine. Wasn’t the Mafia. Like I said,” I told her as I closed the door.
She turned her head to me, and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Really?”
I nodded. “Swear.”
“Should we check on Maeme?” she asked, her voice quavering.
I shook my head. “No, she’s not home. She’s gone to my dad’s to stay with my little sister while my dad and stepmom go on a short trip.”
Her eyes widened. “I forgot you had a sister.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Birdie. She was in the kitchen at the family breakfast. You didn’t get to meet her.”
“You said she was five, right?”
I pulled out onto the road and drove the short distance to the ranch entrance. “Yep. Dad married Jupiter, her mom, seven years ago. She is wife number four and only two years older than me.”
“Wow,” she whispered.
Yeah, wow. My dad had shown me firsthand how relationships never worked. They always ended in tears, hate, and cost a lot of fucking money. I wanted nothing to do with that. Ever.
“We are still going to watch the race? Are the police not coming?” she asked warily.
I wasn’t going to be able to explain this to her. Yet another lie to add to the many I had told her. I knew it was time that I turned my conscience off. I was attracted to her. That was not an issue. If I hadn’t gotten to know her and…started to care about her, then I’d be able to do this without blinking an eye. But I cared. I wanted to protect her. Maybe one day, when this was over, she wouldn’t hate me completely. Perhaps I could give her some memories that she wanted to keep.
“It’s being handled,” I said as I parked beside the other vehicles outside the stables. “The ranch has its own security team. They will deal with things. We are going to go inside and enjoy the evening.”
• twenty-eight •
“You don’t have to be jealous, sweets. Your body has my complete attention.”
Rumor
I understood that the life of the wealthy or uber-wealthy was different. That they handled things more discrete than most. Money was power, and the more you had of the first, the more you had of the second. It came hand in hand. I got all that.
However, I had not known that the billionaires of the world were unfazed by gunshots and criminals trying to get onto their property. King wasn’t even shaken by what had happened. It was as if I hadn’t been shoved onto the floor of his truck while he fired a gun at someone. This wasn’t okay. Was it? I mean, shouldn’t they have cops surrounding the place? They had shot at us. King had shot at someone. There should be…an investigation going on.
Yet here we were, in the large party room I’d been to before in the stables, while people yelled and cheered at the screen covering the wall as horses raced. King kept his hand on my lower back as he drank from the glass of whiskey in his other hand. He was smiling at the screen as if nothing had happened.
Not only was I trying to wrap my head around that, I was also struggling with the fact that there was an almost-naked brunette in Storm’s lap and his hand was between her legs. She was rubbing against it like a dog in heat right in front of everyone. No one seemed to care or notice that either. I was afraid to look anywhere else. It seemed whenever I did, I saw something startling.
“King,” a redhead, wearing a very tiny bikini, cooed as she came to curl up on his other side, the side I wasn’t standing on, “you promised to go in the hot tub with me.”
King glanced down at her, then back at the race. “Change of plans,” he said simply.
Her hand slid around his waist, and I began to step away from him. I needed distance from whatever she was planning on doing, but King’s hand moved from my back to my hip and clamped down on it, holding me still. I swung my gaze up to his face, and his jaw ticked, as if he were annoyed.
“Moira, go away.” His tone was even, but the command in it wasn’t missed on me or her.
She dropped her hand from his body and immediately walked back toward the door. I watched her trying to decide if she was his date tonight. Did the shooting that everyone was ignoring change his plans? He was afraid to leave my side now?